Night Sky Shooting / Astrophotography on X-T2 : ETTR? ISO 1600?

Great tutorial....I use similiar settings; found out by trial and error. Will absolutely second you on Sequator. It's a gem for stacking with X-Trans since it can read the RAF's natively. Also agree its easy to use. Needs to be on every X-Trans shooters computer.

Shame I'm only using an XPro-1 and cable release! I need an upgrade to get the intervalometer.

Have you had any luck with the 55-200mm? I'm thinking of buying a star tracker and giving it a go, but feel it will be hard to focus properly?

Best Regards,

Jason

Xpro1 doesnt have a software one in the menu?

It's the end of August and I could not find a proper night to shoot the milky way yet, it's either cloudy or the moon is here too soon, I hope I will have a nice night this weekend

shiftyonthemic wrote:

Jerry-astro wrote:

I've been pretty successful with starscapes and other astro work with the following basic settings:

ISO 3200
25s max exposure length (else you risk star trailing)
Wide open (f/2.8 in my case -- Zeiss Touit 12mm lens)
Shoot RAW for maximum post processing latitude

Even at those settings, your shots might appear somewhat underexposed. However, there's enough processing latitude to give you plenty of contrast and detail (one reason to shoot RAW in this case). NR at that ISO is still pretty manageable with minimal "star eating" issues.

Jerry-- Did you boost the EC to get a more neutral histogram?

There is nothing to be gained by increasing the EC, ETTR really only applies at base ISO. By setting your SS at 25 sec (or less) and whatever aperture you’ve chosen, you have set the exposure, increasing the EC (ISO, in this case) will only limit the dynamic range you have to work with later and will likely blow out some highlights unnecessarily. Your camera is ISO invariant at 800, so you won’t increase the noise (relative to boosting it in-camera, but by boosting the brightness in post, you will be able to preserve some highlights that would get away otherwise. It’s fine to increase the EC in-camera a bit to see what’s going on, but use the highlight warning (a far better way to judge sensor saturation than the histogram), and keep the EC below (or “at”) where you see any blinking on important (usually ground based) highlight detail. ISO 1600 is usually fine, if you’ve got a lighthouse or something in the foreground you’ll likely be better off at 800 (or better yet, take multiple exposures).

vegetaleb wrote:

Xpro1 doesnt have a software one in the menu?

It's the end of August and I could not find a proper night to shoot the milky way yet, it's either cloudy or the moon is here too soon, I hope I will have a nice night this weekend

Scratch that, yesterday night was a good nearly cloudless sky.  I drove like a mad man till my mountain home and took some series with different settings.

The moon was starting to raise far from the milky way and behind a mountain, so no idea how it impacted the results.

I will check once I go back home from work.

This time I used my new Red Enhancer filter from Hoya...

Unfortunately it doesn't. It's not even compatible with 3rd part Intervalometers or even Fuji ones. That capability apparently came in with the XT-1 onwards. You are stuck with a cable release on the XPro-1 with no alternatives. It does work ok though....you can set you shutter speed, set to a burst mode and it will shoot away. The buffer fills up at about 17 RAF's files which is the maximum.

Best Regards,

Jason

Hello all.  I kind of mistakenly stumbled upon this thread via a link from another forum.  It takes some work, but the X-T2, when pushed with an astro tracker, makes the best starry skies I have created, (previously used Canon 6D and 5D4, Nikon D750, and Sony A73).

From my various readings online, The X-T2 has a reletively weak color filter array, which allows a higher amount of H-alpha reds to pass through to the sensor compared to most other unmodified cameras.  I can vouch that out of all the cameras I've tried, it does indeed produce more pronounced red nebulae.

I will say, without a tracker, the X-T2's night skies are a bit too "grainy" for my taste, but after 2 years, I continue to use it with my tracker over any other camera.

I'd be more than happy to answer any questions.

This is from an outing to Joshua Tree NP this past June.

Devine Joshua Tree

This is a 100% crop of the sky above with Jupiter.  Taken with Fuji 16mm F/1.4 @ F/2.8, 4 mins, ISO 800.

100% crop of sky in above image.

An avid MW shooter in NM here.... we DO get dark skies here

I use the XT3 with the 12mm Rokinon at f2

My parameters are Iso 1250. However, I haven't seen the correct exposure time discussed, so here are my 2 cents. I use the Photopills calculator in the "most stringent" formula. The usual formula used by folks still gives me star trails if I make a big print, so I started using the other formula that gives shorter time. So I usually settle for ~12-14s with this lens.

Like others, I stack. Use the Starry... software on the mac and works great.

Thanks for a great discussion, I always learn here.